DESCRIPTION

This "Gold" version of the hit RTS features the original Rise of Nations and its add-on, Thrones and Patriots.

Rise of Nations is a historically based real-time strategy game from turn-based strategy guru Brian Reynolds and his Big Huge Games studios. The game strives to take only the most enjoyable conventions of real-time strategy games and apply them in an unconventional way. Unlike in most RTS games, for example, resources in Rise of Nations are constituent features of the land, as opposed to discrete mines and forests to be exploited and forgotten. The player claims a resource by claiming the territory in which it lies. Also, though military conquest is certainly an effective means toward global domination, the game is designed such that civic and diplomatic development are equally important, and offer alternate means to ultimate victory.

The Thrones and Patriots add-on includes six new nations, 20 more units, a variety of new single- and multiplayer campaigns, and an important enhancement to the original game's governing system. The expansion pack's Government feature allows any nation to choose its system of government — a factor that can have major effects on resource management and unit performance. Rise of Nations: Thrones and Patriots is designed to bolster the main games' capacity for complex strategy and multi-tiered nation building, while maintaining the fast-paced race to global domination that helps the original stand out from the crowd of historically based RTS games. ~ T.J. Deci, All Game Guide